Law and Ideology

The Chinese communist party (CCP) has felt the need for the rule of law in governing an increasingly pluralist society and a market economy. Xi Jinping made this clear from the outset of his administration. However, the backlash to the push for constitutionalism by reformers in 2013 has exposed the political limits to the judicial reform in China. This paper delineates these limits by highlighting the ideological and organizational foundation of the state, the fundamental distribution of power in it, and the CCP’s traditional mode of existence and exercising power. It concludes that the Chinese political system provides a weak and unreliable basis for the rule of law. Nevertheless, there is substantial room for the law in issue areas that are non-threatening to the CCP rule.
Key Words: liberal and socialist constitutionalism, dictatorship of the proletariat, rule of law, democracy, class struggle

Predmetný príspevok sa venuje otázke vzťahu právnej ideológie a legitimite a autorite práva. Inými slovami sa snažíme zodpovedať otázku, ako právo získava a udržiava si legitimitu a autoritu v spoločnosti, pričom v tomto kontexte je kľúčovým konceptom, ako uvidíme v príspevku, právna ideológia. Cieľom príspevku bude podrobnejšie poukázať na materiálnu stránku právnej ideológie, a to prostredníctvom architektúry súdnych budov. V príspevku budeme uvažovať o tom, ako táto architektúra napomáha k legitimite práva a autorite práva v spoločnosti, čím je špecifická a aké hodnoty sú v nej "materializované".

Romania's anti-liberal turn at the end of the interwar period is a useful case study for analysing the dissolution of the liberal nomos fostered by the Versailles arrangements against the background of the authoritarian takeover in Europe. In this article, I explore the legal and constitutional mechanisms at the core of the instauration of King's Carol II dictatorship. I propose to do so by mapping the reconstruction of the concepts of legality and authority within the political and legal processes seeking to contest, challenge and ultimately reverse the liberal features of the constitutional armature of the Romanian state. Drawing on jurisprudence, political theory, and constitutional history, I seek to unearth the ideological underpinnings of this regime of power and to reflect on the nexus between law and anti-liberal projects of state-building at the end of the interwar period.

https://www.ibidem.eu/en/zeitschriften/jrs/journal-of-romanian-studies-14924.html

The aim of this paper is to show the symbolic dimension of power developed by Pierre Bourdieu which is simultaneously an insightful break with the well-known Marxist conception of ideology. Bourdieu’s theory is concerned with a profound reflection on relations of power, and particularly the unmasking of those relations that might be deemed as “misrecognised” (ergo, hidden and socially accepted). This is a concept of symbolic power that can be understood as misrecognised and perceived as legitimate authority, or paradoxically denied power. It is a capacity to construct the social reality on the terms of dominant social groups and powerful social institutions, including the institution of law and lawyers. The distinction between “sociodicy” (justification of the social word) and “ideology” is a key element for Bourdieu. Agents of the legal field cannot be simply perceived as a cynical. It is not a “false consciousness” that brings them to impose their symbolic power upon society. The operation of symbolic power is not an instrumental power whereby lawyers intentionally try to impose some propaganda. This power is inscribed both in their dispositions (habitus) and social structure (legal field).

The present contribution focuses on the complex relationship between law and ideology from a critical perspective. In particular, the author aims to put forward an ideological critique of the concept of Rule of Law which has been perceived as an “unqualified human good” (to put it in E. P. Thompson’s words). However, there are different concepts of ideology and an unified definition does not exist. In this paper, the author will apply Slavoj Žižek‘s theory of ideology in an attempt to unmask the ideological underpinnings of the concept of Rule of Law.

Instead of seeing legal coherence as a preexisting feature of an object
apprehended by a subject, we should view legal understanding as something
that the legal subject brings to the legal object she comprehends. Because the
legal subject is herself socially constructed, we must consider how her social
construction leads her to understand the legal system or its parts as possessing
or lacking coherence. The goal of this approach is not to replace all inquiries
about the legal object with those about the legal subject; it is rather to see the
subject and object of legal interpretation as equal partners in the constitution
of the legal system. We must pay greater attention to the legal subject now
only because we have paid it so little attention before.